Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

PC03 Undergraduate Education

Date: Tuesday, February 13, 2001

Location: Southwest Hall

Kendall, A, N, Howard University/MUST REU Program, Washington DC, USA, ankendall21@hotmail.com

Donat, J, R, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, USA, jdonat@odu.edu

Burdige, D, J, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, USA, dburdige@odu.edu

DETERMINATION OF TOTAL DISSOLVED COPPER IN BENTHIC FLUX EXPERIMENTS IN THE ELIZABETH RIVER, VIRGINIA

As part of a study of the benthic fluxes of trace metals and their complexing ligands from estuarine sediment porewaters, we determined total dissolved copper (TDCu) concentrations in the bottom water overlying sediment cores collected in May 2000 from two sites in the Elizabeth River - Station 5 (near Norfolk Naval Base) and Station 8 (southern branch of the Elizabeth River near Norfolk Naval Shipyard), using a highly sensitive, low sample- volume chemiluminescent method (Sunda and Huntsman, 1991). Preliminary results show that TDCu in the bottom waters of Stn 5 averaged about 20nM, and no significant TDCu flux was observed over an 8-hour core incubation. TDCu concentrations in the bottom waters of Stn 8 were 2-3 times higher than at Stn 5, and the preliminary data suggest a significant TDCu flux out of Stn 8 sediment porewaters over an 8-hour core incubation. In future work, these data will be combined with Cu complexation and speciation measurements to estimate the importance of the benthic flux of Cu-complexing ligands to Cu speciation in estuarine waters.

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Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

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